* * * * *

ELUSIVE

Just out of reach she lightly swings,
My Psyche with the rainbowed wings,
A floating flower, by winds impelled,
The honeyed spray has caught and held. 
Now circling low, with grace divine,
She sips the tulip’s chaliced wine. 
Why should I seek to bring her nigh
And find—­a simple butterfly?

O isles in ocean’s azure set,
Like sculptured dome and minaret
Your purpled cliffs and headlands rise
Against the far-off, misty skies. 
Yet, thither borne by helpful breeze,
As lifts the veil from circling seas,
Well know I your enchanted land
Would prove but rugged rock and sand.

O friend whose words of wisdom rare
Inspire my soul to do and dare,
Across the distance wide and drear
I will not reach to bring you near. 
Why cast ideal grace away
To find you only common clay? 
The best of life and thought and speech
Is that which lies—­just out of reach.

SARAH D. HOBART.

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THE PARISIAN COUTURIER.

The couturier—­the bearded dressmaker, the masculine artist in silk and satin—­is an essentially modern and Parisian phenomenon.  It is true that the elegant and capricious Madame de Pompadour owed most of her toilets and elegant accoutrements to the genius of Supplis, the famous tailleur pour dames or ladies’ tailor, of the epoch.  But Supplis was an exception, and he never assumed the name of couturier, the masculine form of couturiere, “dress-maker.”  That appellation was reserved for the great artists of the Second Empire, Worth, Aurelly, Pingat, and their rivals, who utterly revolutionized feminine costume and endeavored to direct it in the paths of art, good taste, and comfort.  Enthusiasts of grace and beauty, these artists set themselves the task of preventing the inconstant goddess of fashion from continuing to wander off into ugliness, deformity, and absurdity.  In their devotion to art, beauty, and luxury, they determined never to forget fitness and comfort, and since their initiative has regulated the vagaries of fashion we must admit that our women have never been the victims of such inconvenient, ugly, and absurd inventions as crinoline, leg-o’-mutton sleeves, the coiffure a la fregate, and the various other monstrosities of the Republic, the Directory, and the Restoration, which, thanks to the traditional supremacy of France in matters of fashion, made their way, more or less modified, all over the world.  The modern artists in dress consider justly that what is most important in a dress is the woman who wears it, and that their object should be to set her off to the best advantage, and not to make her remarked,—­in short, to make a toilet which will be to the wearer what the frame is to the portrait.  The role